When a printing process is made by a network system to which a plurality of printers and copying machines are connected, the user selects one printer suited to a print job to execute the printing process. In order to allow a fast printing process, a system that divides one print job and controls a plurality of printers to parallelly print the divided jobs has been proposed (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2001-109599, 8-335150, and the like).
In order to reliably and efficiently make an operation for inserting and binding an insert sheet in output sheets on which images are formed, an insert reservation number is input every time paper sheets are set in an inserter of a printing apparatus. Also, a unique inserter reservation number is appended to a print job when the inserter is used. The print job that uses the inserter is executed when the inserter reservation number of the print job matches the insert reservation number which is input in correspondence with paper sheets currently placed on the inserter. If these numbers do not match, execution of the print job is delayed until the corresponding insert reservation number is input (see U.S. Pat. No. 6,311,029 and the like).
However, even the system which can divide one print job and control a plurality of printers to parallelly print the divided print jobs cannot divide post-processing. When post-processing such as stapling or the like is applied to printed sheets, the user must designate a printing apparatus to which a post-processing apparatus is connected upon printing. For this reason, the performance of the printing system which can divide a print job and parallelly print the divided jobs to attain a high-speed printing process cannot be fully utilized when the post-processing is required. For example, when a printer to which a post-processing apparatus is connected is a monochrome printer, the post-processing must be executed by that monochrome printer. Hence, color and monochrome printing processes must be executed by independent printers. In such case, even when the post-processing is to be executed together with color pages printed by a color printer, it is difficult for the monochrome printer with a post-processing unit to execute such post-processing. For this reason, even when a printer to which a post-processing apparatus is connected is available, color and monochrome pages must be independently printed, and the post-processing must be manually done for these printouts.
In this manner, it is often difficult for the conventional printing system to use the post-processing function of a printer when post-processing is to be applied to printouts.